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Editorial: Digging after Easley

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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

(Updated 3:00 am)

More digging unearths more dark secrets about former Gov. Mike Easley.

Bob Hall of the watchdog organization Democracy North Carolina has been working his shovel lately, and last week he urged the State Board of Elections to look deeper, too.

Importantly, Hall also asked the board to hold an open hearing on possible election law violations by Easley's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

The board should agree. Hearings would expose any wrongdoing to the light of day. And even if statutes of limitations block prosecution of misdeeds committed years ago, the scrutiny would warn other politicians that corruption can't be buried forever.

News reports already have focused on air travel and use of motor vehicles that Easley received for campaign purposes but which weren't reported as contributions. Hall added new details in a letter to State Board of Elections Chairman Larry Leake. Those include findings that a small group of political donors accounted for $380,000 in contributions to Easley's gubernatorial campaigns, and that most of those people received appointments to various state boards.

"In addition," Hall wrote, "based on new information from our research of campaign disclosure reports, we are concerned that the N.C. Democratic Party was apparently used as a conduit for travel-related and other contributions that would violate campaign contribution limits if given directly to the Mike Easley Committee."

For example, Hall listed a $6,000 contribution from Parker Overton to the Democratic Party made on Dec. 31, 2003, and a $6,000 in-kind contribution for air travel made by the party to the Easley campaign on the same day. "It seems apparent that Overton's $6,000 is the money that paid for the Easley committee's travel," Hall said.

Individuals may not contribute more than $4,000 to a candidate for each election. However, there is no limit on how much a person may give to a party or what a party may give to a candidate. Those loopholes should not be used to allow unlimited personal contributions to candidates simply by funneling them through a party. If that's what the Democratic Party did for Easley, it would appear to be an accomplice to whatever violations might be alleged against his campaign.

The former governor already is up to his neck in investigations, most notably by the U.S. attorney. His role in securing a high-paying job for his wife at N.C. State is being reviewed, and there's a possible tie-in to campaign-financing issues.

The State Board of Elections has a responsibility to see that election laws were not violated and that campaign contributions weren't used to secure political favors. The people have a right to expect that their leaders, especially a governor, don't gain office by illegal or underhanded means. Even if the governor is already out of office, there's reason to dig up whatever troubles he might have left buried behind him. In Easley's case, more digging is definitely required.

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Fern

July 23, 2009 - 12:00 am EDT

Asking the State Board of Elections to investigate Easley's underreported travel is almost as funny as asking the State Ethics Committee to investigate unethical behavior. Who appointed those people?

I commend Bob Hall for trying to expose the way influence is purchased outside public view, but rather than asking Larry Leake to investigate Easley, he needs to ask Leake to resign. One of the earliest red flags re Easley's travels was a helicopter flight to a fund raiser at Leake's home provided by a state contractor, reportedly one that had been involved with bidrigging on DOT work.

Given that fact, how can Leake be asked to investigate Easley? Surely he was aware of the problem with underreported travel years ago.

Noam Chomsky observed in Media Control, the Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, "there's a principle of the intellectual culture that although you investigate enemy crimes with laserlike intensity, you never look at your
own. . ." That is certainly the rule in NC. The people Jim Hunt helped bring to power are more than willing to expend taxpayer funds going after their political enemies, but their political allies are a very different story.

I'd love to know how much has been wasted on trying to get the courts to ignore the clear language of the Constitution on districts or DPI supervision, not to mention seeking slush fund settlements like the Golden Fleece, the way I think of Golden Leaf, just as I view the Clean Water Trust Fund as the Clean Water Slush Fund and the Global Transpark as the Global TranspOrk. I even keep one of the cute mousepads the porkers handed out a few years ago when they were claiming building blimps justified wasting more tax funds on the Transpork. Ignorance must be bliss. If you actually follow the money, you find a lot of private profit rather than public purpose.

annryder

July 23, 2009 - 8:04 am EDT

Fern is correct. Leake is a major player in campaign/election/voter fraud. Why else would Hunt, Easley, Perdue put him in such a position? Just think of his actions attempting to protect the dirty play by Cooper against Boyce in that campaign. As far as I know, that case is still in court.

PrinceofTides

July 26, 2009 - 6:56 pm EDT

John Kasarda, the brains behind the “Aerotropolis” concept for the Triad, also planned the failed Global Transpark in Kinston. “Global” was to be a cargo airport and industrial hub with great access to eastern NC ports. It too, was meant to provide a high-tech boost to eastern North Carolina, but it struggled to attract businesses and jobs.
Do you believe the “Global Transpark Authority” membership should bear financial responsibility to the taxpayers? They don’t have the cash to pay off the $32.1 million they owe to NC (Escheats fund) or the $18.1 million they owe to the Federal Aviation Administration according to a 2008 audit.
Corporate greed and financial self-interests in these public/private partnerships is destroying our nation and state.
Corporations and developers who purchase “Stakeholder” seats on land-use/transportation planning committees, allowing no collaboration with anyone outside their inner circles until their “preferred concepts” are in place, have usurped planning in North Carolina to promote financial self-interests. These highly concentrated “Authority and Agency” Boards, such as the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART), Piedmont Triad Airport Authority (PTIA) and Piedmont Triad Partnership (PTP), that receive federal, state, and local taxpayer funds proceed with shameless impunity.
PART and PTIA wield the power of eminent domain with no accountability, and the “Aerotropolis Leadership Board” plans to request an NC General Assembly charter for another “Regional Planning Authority”. The need for a diverse group of individuals in the planning process is essential to maintain the public trust and the economic vitality and environmental stability of our state.
Do you support the idea of all “Authority and Agency” Boards to include MPOs and TACs, receiving public funding, to be subject to the State Government Ethics Act, with transparency and open access to financial records? Should they be financially responsible and accountable to the taxpayers?
Our Governor, Lt. Governor and legislators need to hear from you!

Fern

August 1, 2009 - 7:26 pm EDT

PrinceofTides, are you working with the Feds on the ongoing investigation? If not, I’d love to talk to you. The key to limiting corruption is making it possible for the public to follow the money.
As I told Jim Hunt a little over a decade ago, too many “non-profits” in NC are actually very profitable for a few individuals. The lack of accountability and transparency in state government is like an invitation to misappropriate taxpayer funds.
Too many public-private partnerships are government-funded Madoff schemes to transfer money from the public to a handful of private individuals with cover stories provided by government agencies using taxpayer funds. Honest businesses have a hard time competing with the crooks (and I hope to see more of those crooks in court) who use government connections to gain an unfair advantage. DENR has become an even bigger problem than DOT, despite DOT’s longtime corruption issues.
I’ve said for years that the easy way to riches in NC is buying cheap land and cheap politicians. The land is cheap because it has flaws the government can fix using OPM (other people’s money – the addiction of the insider class); the politicians they buy are cheap . . .well, if they’ll sell out the voters who trusted them for pennies on the dollar, that fits my definition, even if they’re paid millions.
What about the current plans to make land that’s cheap because there is no cost-effective way to provide sewer much more valuable by changing the law so developers can simply inject the treated waste in the aquifer that provides drinking water for the public? When will DENR tell the public they’re OK with risking the drinking water of thousands of people to help the “right people” save a few bucks? Trust DENR? Not after reading about the Hercules experiment, a spectacularly failed “experiment” authorized by DENR to help a company save money on hazardous waste disposal by permitting aquifer injection.
The bill to permit aquifer injection actually made it past the Water Resources committee of the NC House because DENR kept quiet about their failed experiment. Once some facts got tossed out in public in the Environment Committee, the bill was converted to a study bill, but given the sums involved the public had better realize the lack of real scholarship behind some “scholarly studies.” The leaders of the UNC system should be embarrassed by the lack of intellectual underpinning of some of the stuff they’ve released lately.
Easley’s travel bills are chump change and unless he has millions stashed we haven’t heard about, he was a minor player, just like Jim Black. The real question is what the people providing the travel received in return and what plans are still afoot. The Alcoa dams make a great cover story, but why are the 38,000 acres the gang wanted to take with the dams so seldom mentioned? Why no discussion of the ties between the instigators of the plan and the Perdue administration? Why no discussion of the real estate deals being promoted and even subsidized using taxpayer funds? This story has a long ways to go.